Danny K in first-of-kind partnership

Published Dec 4, 2013

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A few years back Danny K ( pictured) made South African music history when his album came embedded on a cellphone. Almost six years down the line he has again made South African music history.

His sixth album, Good Luck, is now available for free download on all Samsung devices. This cleverly applies to the first 20 000 people who download the Danny K Samsung app, which means the album automatically goes gold.

Danny K is delighted with the results.

“Already 5 000 have been downloaded and we are only starting with marketing this week,” he said.

“Initially, our biggest problem was that there were so many downloads off the app that people couldn’t access the link. We had to put extra capacity to handle the amount of traffic. We didn’t expect so much traffic.”

He said Samsung approached him after seeing the download success of his first single off the album, Brown Eyes.

“When we released Brown Eyes I put it on all the download stores and it became the most downloaded local track within a couple of months. Samsung saw there was an appetite for my music.

“They wanted to do the same thing they did with Jay-Z which was to give away free CDs through a Samsung app.”

Six months ago Jay-Z and Samsung collaborated on a project where they gave away his Magna Carter album for free.

Danny’s app comes with the 11-track album as well as photo galleries, videos, acoustic live performances and a behind-the scenes segment of the making of the album.

“This has been an interesting journey for me because I come from a time when all you did was sell CDs. I worked really hard on this album and it is great to know that 20 000 people will get to hear the entire album as opposed to one or two singles.”

Danny believes this move is also good for the South African music industry as a whole.

“This shows that corporate South Africa realises music is a powerful commodity in attracting customers. They realise they can build loyalty towards a brand by rewarding customers with exclusive things like this. It’s good Samsung are as forward as they are.”

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